For decades, Filipinos have been practicing natural family planning methods such as “withdrawal” and it is simply not working. According to a study done by WEDPRO (Women, Education, Productivity, Research Organization) on family planning methods in the rural areas, women have even resorted to using  Coke and toothpaste as spermicides, as well as utilized the rubber in tires as condoms.  Many women obviously don’t have access to adequate information, much less the social services needed to make sure that their health is maintained during the delicate time of pregnancy and childbirth.

What this population control debate boils down to, however, is a simple supply and demand dynamic.  Supply and demand is the basic law in economics that argues that the precarious balance of supply and demand determines prices. Now, what does this mean for wages? As long as there is plenty of supply, say in a huge population like ours, in a country with fluctuating economic growth and therefore unreliable job creation and job market, Filipino wages  will always be kept at a bare minimum. Why? Because the slow growth in Philippine economy simply cannot keep up with the number of people who need jobs. Why? Because in a climate of heightened competition, there are always plenty of people willing to work for less. This means that workers are often easily exploited and taken advantage of. Their rights are not  upheld because the boss always has the upper hand –“fail to comply and you can always be replaced; there’s always plenty of you out there.”

Education is a basic right of children, and with parents bringing in minimum wages that simply cannot feed their kids, how can we educate Filipinos, much less make them competitive in an increasingly global market?

What is alarming with Archbishop Aniceto’s rhetoric that it’s okay for Filipinos “to go forth and multiply” as it compensates for the aging population elsewhere.  Does it then justify the brain drain and mass displacement of Filipinos going abroad, isolated and separated from their families because they cannot get good well-paying jobs in their own country? How is this, in line with the government’s valorization of OFWs, “preserving and upholding the dignity of the Filipino family”? As it is, many Filipino families are already torn and fragmented –with children left alone here while their mothers go abroad to take care of the children of those in richer economies.  If, by withholding effective birth control methods, the Catholic Church’s aim is to keep the Filipino family intact, then it has already failed its objective.

Archbishop Aniceto is right however –some European countries, Canada, and even  Japan’s population  is aging. But what does this have to do with Filipinos, unless we bring to light the fact that right now,   several million Filipinos are out there  serving  these “aging populations”  as domestic helpers , caretakers and even as trafficked and prostituted women?

We can’t allow population to keep booming, and then justify that it’s okay, because we can just deploy Filipinos all over the world and leave them to fend for themselves. We have barely secured the rights of Filipinos who set off and risk their luck abroad. Migrant Filipinos, for instance are scattered in over 180 countries all over the world. As it is, we only have bilateral agreements with around 80 of them.

The Filipino state is a metaphor for our parents, and it simply cannot accommodate such an exponential growth in its children, which, according to a 2007 Inquirer article is about 15% faster than our ASEAN peers. We simply can’t blame it on the bad parenting or “corruption” on the parent’s part.  The simple logic is this:  if you can’t sustain your children, then you better be prepared to stop having children. The old methods have failed. Unless we do something, our women will continue to be at risk for harassment as servants, entertainers and playthings elsewhere, families will continue to be torn apart, and the wages for many hard-working and persevering Filipinos will never be enough for what they deserve.

http://www.ateneo.edu/index.php?p=1809

http://www.ateneo.edu/ateneo/www/UserFiles/121/docs/kk07.pdf

]]> http://danicarmariano.blog.friendster.com/2007/06/engendering-desire-in-aida-santos%e2%80%99-lesbian-poetry/feed/ http://danicarmariano.blog.friendster.com/2007/02/i-was-the-mermaid-your-old-lover/ http://danicarmariano.blog.friendster.com/2007/02/i-was-the-mermaid-your-old-lover/#comments Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:26:31 +0000 danicarmariano http://danicarmariano.blog.friendster.com/2007/02/i-was-the-mermaid-your-old-lover/  

For  S. B.

I was the mermaid your old lover

diving in waters that closer

bloom into color

fishes striped and curvy

wet, taunting, slippery as your
body

We speak of our common need of
the sea.

I was the mermaid your old lover

trading secrets of the blue

for my sole chance to kiss you

I seep in your land dweller’s
dreams

soothed by waves of longing

I was the mermaid your old lover

you touch my fins, i groan in song

and grow the legs to come

as over the hungry water I run

to the waiting edge of one

I was the mermaid your old lover

I tasted salt and breathed it in

and swam  up the shore’s shouting wind

and in the unfathomable lore

there in your arms

I drown incessantly 

february 7 2007

Sa pagtratranslate ng mga

tula

ni Rumi, nagulat ako ang daming palang
salita sa Filipino para sa “Like This.” Ganito. Hangang Dito. Parang Ito. Tulad Nito. Ang magsalita sa ibang wika ay magbukas nang ibang mundo. Ang
magsalin ay makakita nang magkabilang katotohanan. Walang mas tama o mali: walang orihinal.

Ang ganda ng translation ng “falling” sa tagalog. Hulog. May
meaning. May Ka-hulug-an. Random pero may bigat. At kung mabigat ang paghulog,
maraming pasa. at kung mabigat ang kamay, masakit, at kung mabigat ang bagahe,
mahirap dalhin. (at kung mabigat sa tiyan, nakakatae..) Pero ang mabigat ay
hindi nalilipad at hindi basta bastang naiitulak ng hangin. Ang mabigat ay
“steady lang.” Andiyan lang parati.

Marami akong air signs sa astrological chart ko. At fire. at
water. 33.33% bawat isa. Intellectual, Passionate, Emotional daw, ibig sabihin.
Pero walang earth. Walang humihila
pababa. Na, sa totoo lang ay isa sa pinakapinagmumulan ng aking mga problema.
Kaya siguro hulog ako nang hulog. Kasi habang naka salubsob sa lupa, dun lang ako
nakakatingala talaga sa mga tala.
 
At dun lang ako napapaalalahanan: wala pala sa akin ang
takbo ng palad ng mundo, ang kaya ko lang sipatin ay ang udyok ng puso ko.

 Sa bagong taon, bagong batas: ang mataimtim na pagsalo’  (at naway pag-salo-salo) sa mga ka-hulugan nito.

* * * * * * * * *

(Salin ko sa dalawang tula
ni Rumi)

ANG BAGONG BATAS
 

Dating batas na mag-talo at mag-away ang mga lasing.

Ang mangigibig ay sing ligaw. Nahuhulog siya sa butas,

Pero sa butas, may nahahanap siyang makintab

Higit pa sa halaga nang anumang yaman or kapangyarihan.

Kagabi, hinulog ng buwan and kanyang saplot sa daan.

Isang hudyat para sakin

na magsimulang kumanta

habang nahuhulog sa mangkok ng langit.

Nababasag ang mangkok. Ang bawat paligid, bumabagsak sa
bawat paligid.

Wala nang magagawa pa.

Eto and bagong batas:  basagin ang kopita

At mahulog patungo sa hininga ng Taga-ihip niya.

Ganito

Kung meron mang magtanong

Sa itsura nang tarok ng

Kaligayahan ng ating nasa, iaangat mo

Ang mukha mo at sabihing:

                                                          Ganito.

Kung meron mang magbangit tungkol sa kariktan

Nang langit sa gabi, umakyat sa bubong,

Sumayaw, at sabihing:

                                                                 Ganito?

Kung mayroon mang gustong makaalam kung ano ang “diwa”

O ang halimuyak ng Diyos, Ilapit ang iyong ulo sa kanya

At panatilihing nakabaon

                                                          Tulad
nito.

Kapag mayroon mang magsalita tungkol sa dating imahen ng tula

Nang mga ulap na dahan dahang naghuhubad sa buwan

Dahan dahan mo ring luwagan ang buhol

ng tali sa iyong roba.

                                                      Tulad
nito?

Kung mayroon mang magtaka kung paano binuhay ni Jesus and
patay

Wag nang piliting intindihin ang milagro.

Halikan mo ako sa labi.

                                           Nang
Ganto. Nang Ganto.

Kapag may magtanong

Ano ang ibig sabihin nang “mamatay para sa pag-ibig”

Ituro

                                                      Dito.

Kung may magtanong hangang saan ako umaabot,

ikunot ang iyong nuo at sipatin ang layo sa pagitan nito

                                      Hanggang
Dito.

Minsan umaalis ang kaluluwa mula sa katawan, at
nanunumbalik.

Kung mayroon mang hindi naniniwala dito,

Maglakad pabalik sa aking tahanan.

                                       Tulad
Nito.

Kapag umuungol ang mga nagtatalik

Kinuwento nila tayo.

                                        Tulad
Nito.

Ako ay langit kung saan nabubuhay ang mga espirito.

Tumitig dito sa lumalalim na asul

Habang nagbubulong na lihim ang amihan

                                           Tulad
nito.

Kung may magtanong “ano ang gagawin ko”

Sindihan ang kandila sa kanilang kamay

                                           Tulad
nito.

Pa’no nakarating ang diwa ni Joseph kay Jacob?

                                           Huuu.

Pa’no nanumbalik ang pagkakita ni Jacob?

                                        Huuuu.

Ang madahang hangin ay naglilinis ng mata.

                                      Tulad
Nito.

At pagbalik ni Shams sa

Tabriz,

Isisilip niya ang kanyang ulo sa gilid ng pinto

Para

gulatin tayo,

                                   Tulad Nito.

“Happiness is a choice. Not a tagline.” –Dana

My best friend, Dana, who I fondly call “time travel girl” airs
her view on Christmas and year enders. She wonders what all the rush and fuss is
all about when, really, the year just rolls on over and doesn’t quite stop. It’s
like the craze over how people thought the year 2000 would usher in Armageddon.
It’s like all this shenanigan about a disc world resting on top of ancient tortoises
standing on giant elephants held in place by serpents, when, really, the world
is round not flat and such edges and things do not exist except in myth and in invisible
meridians in our heads.

Flashback to this really cheesy movie that I cried watching,
where a lover brings his girl to this border that divides one state from
another so she could be at two places at one time: her dying wish.

We’ve become such suckers for stories and moments that make
time seem infinite, Dana and I. I hate that she taught me the poetry of 11:11,
and now I’m obsessed with it.

(11:11’s)

She hates that I taught her the concept of
synchronicity, because now she can’t stop finding it everywhere. All the while she
cautions me with my overacting and overactive mind to stop reading meaning into
everything. “Some things are just chaotic and should be taken for what they are,”
a recap of a hard lesson from this ‘Year of unintended consequences’ as another
friend aptly dubbed it. Time knelt down on one knee and in a solemn, painful
genuflection, the year was knighted with the title. The sword almost swiped off
its ears, mind you.

I took ‘time travel girl’ to this secret ritual place where I once saw the
longest rainbow I’ve ever seen in my life. Looking at the cliff-side view of
manila’s skyline at night beside an acacia tree, we say under our breaths: the
edge of the world. Its still there. Its a cliff to hurl our woes in,
cast our prayers to. While breathing in wet grass stirred with Christmas air, what
I call the smell of loneliness, she calls the perfume of quiet. What I call my desire
for the impossible and my ignorance of how to quit, she calls the eternal
dreamer in me that believes that hope wins out and the impossible can be had.

The edge of the world: we can even capture it in pictures
and make them our phone’s wallpaper. The built in ‘moment camera’ in our heads.
Our ‘ritual detector’ goes off and bleeps incessantly while we (over) document a
lonely tree snagged and bound with Christmas lights.

“A dozen pictures of the same tree in multiple angles, d’
you think its enough?”

“Well, now it feels like a celebrity, don’t it?”

Invisible meridians,
but they’re there.

I share the history of the place with time travel girl: how I cried finding God
there, first acknowledging the air vitality globules as angels bearing
particles of enlightenment. Light: the more we keep on acknowledging it, being
grateful to it, the more we keep on seeing it.

Seeing the view of the rooftops as a metaphor for the
craters of our lives, we realize: the highs give us vantage point, while the
lows carve out a magnificent view that we will watch in nostalgia with as we
look on from the heights.

We go back to the the history of the place:  how I asked my first girlfriend to be with me
there, sitting in the middle of the lawn picnic style in a blue neon mat even
though there’s a glaring red “no admittance” sign just outside. So what if all
these damn priests could be watching, I wanted to kiss her but I was too
chicken and so I lied and told her I dropped a ballpen, and while she looked
for the non-existent pen in the sea of green blades, I caught her off guard long
enough for a hug that ended up as a cuddle. She said ‘yes,’ and we proceeded to
finding one of the happiest years of our lives together until the whole thing fell
apart. (When it ended, I also came back there to throw my curses to the abyss.)

My mentor in hypnosis, the most evolved man I know, lives
behind this place as well and he too loves the view of the lights at night. To
me, they look like bejeweled holy Hindu elephants. He considers the view a metaphor
for inner and outer states: subjective and objective reality. You can look at
the glass to see your face’s reflection, or you can look at the window to the
vast outside world: choose.

*The cliff is perspective.  Dana and I sat in silence for quite a time,
knowing and understanding each other’s quiet as only old friends would.She was already wearing the
purple Nepalese invisible cloak I gave her for Christmas. After
the moldy wooded bench we were sitting on gave out, we thought it a sign to end
our solemn mecca of breaking and entering. On our way out we pass by
my hypnosis mentor, the one who reminds me of an ancient tortoise.Squatting to squeeze out the
gate, certain body parts awkwardly snagging on the moist metals, we exclaim it’s
harder getting out than in.

“Oh god, can’t there just not be a metaphor for
everything?!”  she quips.
“Well, I’m just grateful for yoga.”

Fast forward to a late Christmas eve, catching up coffee
session: I tell a circle of close, trusted friends, that it is friendship, more
than our consuming romantic loves, that bring us back to ourselves: the slow
steady fire versus the rapture of burning out. Friendship is the miracle of
misery plus misery equals happiness, stupidity plus stupidity equals
brilliance. It’s about going through the costly and impractical “detours” –yes,
a euphemism for getting lost—and not minding ‘cause heck at least there’s
good conversation along the way. 

Such holy transmutations. The mystery of the infinite
loaves. (even better than the revolving fruitcake!) It couldn’t have come from
us. We only brought so much food and we didn’t even wanna share them in
the first place! Eitherway we ended up fed and full in an unintended
feast. (Hmm. Is this why I’m getting
fat??)

Back to the edge of this page: an illusory ending, when
really there is none. Only me deciding, ‘Ahh, it is enough.’  “Surrogates are the real thing, you know,” I tell my support
group, my surrogate life partners. The
more you acknowledge and feel grateful for it, the more you see it.

My
friend the time travel girl says ‘what’s all this fuss about Christmas and year
enders when really, time just rolls right over and never stops.’ In writing, this device is called ‘bookends.’ It hopes to give
you deja vu, because really, I’m just repeating what I said in the beginning. But
oh, so much memory and so much longing and so much friendship and so much love have happened since
then. The end is the beginning is the end. The edge of the world just shrugs and rolls right on over. Was
Columbus or Magellan terribly disappointed or happily surprised? For my friends
and i, however, though boy, how we like flirting with the idea of it, we’re
just grateful for not falling off the edge.

“This year, this year, we are humbled,” my friend,
the time travel girl says. In the ceasing of this year, rightly dubbed the
year of unintended consequences, we sigh , show respect, and genuflect.

We honor the invisible meridians—useless if not for the break-in rituals and forgotten if not for the lines of shared memory. Today, however,
at this moment, I am in two places at the same time.

December 25, 2006
3:30am

i looked at the dictionary and *unintendedly* meridian means:

Meridian a. relating to noon. 1 noon 2 line of longitude
passing though poles and cutting equator at right angles. 3 zenith

 
Zenith n. point of heavens directly overhead; fig highest
point, climax; acme.

(hehe.)

*picture not from the actual place to protect its identity. no, you can’t know where the secret ritual place is. it’s
mine. mwahahaha.

*Thanks, emer for the term “the year of unintended
consequences.”

  Carl Jung

There are places in ones heart that does not yet exist, and
into them enters suffering so that they may have their existence.

  Leon Bloy, in End of the
Affair ,

I was sent to the ASEAN Civil
Society Conference held in

cebu  philippines

representing ang ladlad in the youth plenary. In the conference terms like “Human Rights” “Disarmament and
Reintegration” “Peace-Building” “Bio Mass regeneration” were thrown around. Fancy
words which boil down to the essential dilemma of how to further our humanity
by learning to clean up after ourselves and love our neighbor as ourselves. 

As ourselves– meaning on a level we feel
comfortable with, that respects our limits.   As
ourselves– highlighting our strong points and our unique capacity to give,
tapping into our boundless generosity towards a greater recognition that the
other is more important.   As ourselves
–where the more we become who we really are, the more we are transported outside
of ourselves–explaining why love is ecstatic, a going beyond oneself.

To love our neighbor as ourselves
involves an alternative ethics of care instead of the usual rat race of getting
ahead. Its not a selfish kind of love
–seeking what favors it can return, what trade arrangements it can further,
what resources of theirs one can exploit, but a love that is permissive: "non-interfering,"
respecting their culture, letting them run the way they want  things run for as long as they are hurting no
one.  For as long as they are hurting no
one:  that was a big question in the
conference. When is it right to interfere? Where does political meddling start
and non-interference end?

And what is the ethics of “non-interference” in a country like Burma for example, where thousands
of children are made to choose between leaving their families and taking up
arms, having to kill their fellow civilians without knowing why  or languishing in the jungles with only
plastics in their heads to protect them from the rain, not knowing where their
next meal is coming from, or whether the next step they are going to take will
detonate a land mine?

How do you watch your neighbor
languish and not do a thing?  What is the
ethics of standing by as your sister gets raped? Some people say that the
existence is evil is proof of the non-existence of God. How can s/he let such
atrocities continue when s/he could have done something about it? Before our Maker,
however, what if we were asked the
same question?

Terrorism is only possible when we
do not recognize ourselves in the Other, seeing that to wound them is to wound
ourselves, blind to the great sea of collective consciousness that we are all in.

Solidarity in compassion is learning how to suffer through our common pain,
trying to make that pain as bearable as it can be made in another, knowing that
we share the same fate.

What we do in Psychology, Political
science, and all the social sciences for that matter, Neil Postman said, should
actually be called moral theology. Because really, that’s what they are about:
how to tell our stories so that they resonate and remind us of that which is “the
same in all.” The simplest things are often the most difficult, and we spend so
much money and so much effort and so much time just to learn the most
essential: how to live in compassion and respect.  Respect is to recognize the other as Other,
allowing them to unravel in their full potential, and opening as many doors for
them as possible. Compassion comes from the Latin words meaning “with
suffering.”  Compassion is to know how to
suffer for another, whether that be your best friend, the stranger on the
street, the child soldiers in burma,
the sex workers in  Cambodia, the jailed human rights defenders in East Timor or the lesbians and gays in Malaysia.

    The same fate: being gagged by
hegemonic powers whose interests we do not serve and thus threaten, living in a
culture of violence where we know of nothing else, prevented from loving and learning
to the fullest, struggling for a self-determination and independence that is
ever-elusive.
 

Given all the poverty we have to
endure, we like to take the easy way out through assmosis. Assmosis is the
process of becoming an ass by kissing ass. We sign bilateral agreements with
the United States.just so they could give us more money and “services” at the
expense of justice for our countrymen and women, (like in the case of Nicole
and the VFA) We approve of neoliberal economic policies that threaten the lives
and sustenance of the less powerful among us.

 
All of us are guilty of identifying
with the aggressor when we would rather ally with the winning side—capitalists,
whites, men, straights—because it also confers more power on us, momentarily
allowing us to delude ourselves from our pathetic condition. For all the Philippines’ colonial mentality, we could even say we are
masters of this strategy.

In reality however, how we act
towards people who are weaker than us, those who are marginalized and scorned,
is the true measure of our humanity. The human face of the other both begs and
commands. It is a vulnerability that beckons us, questioning: “if you aren’t
good, do you have a right to be?”

If we are always called to
suffering, to our cross, it is only because we are always called to compassion.
And to love. And everywhere, whether we are learning about it in the regional
conference of the ASEAN civil society, or in the politics of our own hearts, it
is all we really have to answer to.

They say “as long as we can be
wounded, we can be saved.”  If we’re not asking how to make life better for
others and how to increase love in the world, we are asking the wrong question.
Any good conference should remind us of this. Otherwise big words like “Development,”
“Dignity,” “Responsibility,” “Peace,” “Equality,” and “Human Rights” are just
fancy concepts.  In this season of being
saved, let us remember that.

“I beg you  to have patience with everything unresolved
in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were
locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the
answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to
live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even
noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

                                                                        
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

My friend who took up her Masters in
Philosophy said she did so so she could get some freaking answers. She ended up
with more fucking questions. I took up Literary and Cultural Studies so I can
learn how to read, but language (with all its shapes and silences), more
than ever, eludes me.  It’s a love-hate relationship. (With more love
than hate, I hope.)

What I know about poetry: that we
should aspire for an impure one, riddled with our sweat and tears and snot,
soiled by the dirt of too much living, tasteless perhaps, but altogether real.
Crude perhaps, but altogether honest. And because of that, terrifyingly
beautiful. (or is it beautifully terrifying?) Ah, it’s all in the irony. “because beauty is the start of terror we can hardly bear, and we adore it for the serene scorn  it can kill us with," Rilke said.

Some quotes about poetry swimming in my head:

“Poetry is not a luxury. It’s a matter of survival.” (Audre
Lorde)   

“Poetry is the moment you lay your eyes
on what you can’t have”

   
               
    “Poetry is a zoo where we keep our angels and demons.”

Poetry is not the
light you switch on/ To find a room

                      
It is the incandescence dark bodies give off 

It is the wife seen in an eye of hazard. /It is the silence
that remains when/ your life

                                                      
in translation is pulled howling away

by the
hair,/by the hour, by them.

  (Emanuel Torres)

            Still.
all I know is, I know enough about poetry to say I know jack shit about it. And
with that, I’ll leave its defining (or the eluding of defining) to the people
who know how to elude defining best –the poets.

                                                “Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.” 

(below is a poem of John Ashberry that I love.)

***************************************************************************************************
PARADOXES AND OXYMORONS

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the stream and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

***************************************************************************************************

Words seem lifeless next to your
yellow blaze
next to your red tail,
next to your bright amaranth mane.
words are simply cold.
we say “fire” –-
fire! fire! fire!–

But you’re not
just a word,
though words
entirely lacking
in flame
shake loose and fall
From the tree of time.
You are
flower,
fancy,
consummation, embrace,
and elusive substance.
You are violence and destruction,
secrecy, stormy
wing of death and life,
creation and ashes alike.
you are a dazzling spark,
a sword covered with eyes,
you are eminence,
autumn or sudden summer,
gunpowder’s dry thunder,
collapse of mountain ranges,
river of smoke,
obscurity and silence.

………

go ahead,
burn me
now
flare
into my song,
course
through my veins
exit
through my mouth.

………..

Show me
your green and orange body,
raise
your flags,
crackle
on the surface of the earth
or right here by my side, as calm
as pale topaz.
Look at me, then go to sleep.
Climb the stairs
on your multitude of feet.
Chase me,
come alive
so I can write you down,
so you can sing
with my words
in your own way,
burning.

                                                         
Excerpts, Neruda’s Ode to Fire.

That a woman not ask a man to leave
meaningful work to follow her.

That a man not ask a woman to leave
meaningful work to follow him. 

That no one try to put Eros in bondage.

But that no one put a cudgel in the
hands of Eros. 

That our loyalty to one another and our
loyalty to our work not be set in false conflict.

That our love for each other give us
love for each other’s work. 

That our love for each other’s work
give us love for one another.

That our love for each other’s work
give us love for one another. 

That our love for each other give us
love for each other’s work.

That our love for each other, if need
be, give way to absence. And the unknown.  

That we endure absence, if need be,
without losing our love for each other,

without closing our doors to the
unknown.

Denise
Levertov

Excerpt from ‘End of the Affair’

   She had said to me – they
were nearly the last words I heard from her before she came dripping into the
hall from her assignation – ‘You needn’t be so scared. Love doesn’t end. Just
because we don’t see each other…’ She had already made her decision, though I
didn’t know it till next day, when the telephone presented nothing but the
silent open mouth of somebody found dead. She said, ‘My dear, my dear, people
go on loving God, don’t they, all their lives without seeing Him?’

                     
‘That’s not our kind of love.’

               
   ’I sometimes don’t believe there’s any other kind

 
               
               
               
               
            
         Graham Greene
         

Sonnet  (excerpt)

But love,
this love has not ended:

just as it
never had a birth,

it has no
death: it is like

A long river,

only changing
lands, changing lips.

                                                                                                         
Pablo Neruda

             
Because I dreamt of writing an entry like this, and because not enough credit
is given to it: here’s a tribute to spaces.

      
    Spaces. We often dread the concept and the word. (as it is
performative!)
To hear “I need some space” is one of the most painful things one could
hear from a beloved, worse than if she asked for the universe.  (A line
from Friends goes: “Well, maybe she can ask  for time as well, and then
she can mix them up and she can have a continuum..”)

               
The dread of spaces is why we fill everything with noise: visual noise, perfume
music, (“just so there’s something there in the background”)  everything
and anything just to hide the stink of absence.

    But
without spaces, without absence, we can’t be entranced. We can’t crystallize.

    In the
Salt Mines of Salzburg,  if you throw a branch into the cave and fish it
out several months later, it would have salt crystals all over it.  That’s
crystallization for you.  And it can only unravel over time. And with
space. Indeed, as in a continuum.

"It’s our own love and
our own faith we are doubting when we question the time and distances it cannot
cross."

As I wrote before, (3 years
ago) on why I find it so difficult to write poetry:  (and also why I write
long  pieces..)

      
I must admit, I have been one of those who fear space and who have thought of
space as a negation. I guess that is why I work better in fiction than in
poetry. I am scared of being misunderstood and I have this crazy concept that if
you fill a space, readers would understand it better. I realize this is also
stems from a kind of mistrust on the reader. Because space is so dynamic, I do
not know what he or she would do with it. I have also equated the filling of
space to efficiency, the level of how many pages you reach directly
proportional to your grade in an academic system.  I also think of all the
trees cut down for paper, and wonder if what is said in it is worth the
sacrifice of such a creature. I have hated all those poems who waste a page
with just a line or so, as if it were so profound.

      
But more that that, I have been paralyzed by the scary whiteness of a blank
sheet. There was one grafitti in a bathroom door that asked, “Bakit ba kayo
nagsusulat dito?” and another grafitti answered – “ Because the purpose of
a void is to be filled.” Perhaps it is why we have grafitti all over the place.
People desperate to make their mark against another person’s right to clarity
and cleanliness.

………..

    
But if there’s any kind of God, it would be in the spaces between us. Between
us lies the respect for the difference of another, and the capacity to feel a
fluid reality outside us which makes communication possible. The Buddhist and
mystics believed in a “luminous
emptiness,” a sacred space. Taoists believed life to hang between the precarious balance
between being and nothingness, inhaling and exhaling, the yin and yang.

      
Without space, without quietness, poets wouldn’t even have a chance to create.
Even God rested on the seventh day. Breathe is indeed life giving. Space,
quietness makes room for growth, learning, creativity. 

………….

         
The unconscious is activated when looking at blank spaces. They serve as
a medium of projection. Crystal balls, computer screens or anything really can release this inner dynamism. By focusing on the space, one can
gain our deeper minds’ greater creativity as well as even extraordinary
perception wherein the mind can perceive a reality not of its own making.

          
The relegation of space as a mere background, or a nothingness that must be
fought  is similar to society’s disrespect to the unconscious, to Eastern
thinking and to women. Losing the values related to it and their potential
capacities and insights, one sacrifices peaceful meditation for critical
thinking, nature for stone edifices, space for boxes.

   
         Space is not something to conquer or
appropriate. In their craft, poet’s learn to curb this urge of owning the space
by violating it. They learn respect for the pauses. Very much like graceful
swimming, you learn to use the space around you to transport you. You do not
treat it like your enemy, but rather trust its buoyancy so you can float.

************************************************

          Nowadays,
(and aside from the poems, this is the part I’ve dreamt of writing) I’d like to think I’ve become a
great believer in holy ghosts, absent presences, pregnant silences, palpable
voids.

 
            The unsaid. (not just that, but the unheard!)

 
           In the music of
Schumman, he builds up the entire sonata for a note, a key, which he doesn’t
play. This makes us hear that note all the more. Restraint is alluring.

            
The veil that we can’t see through is the essence of art. And the core of our
existence.

            Space is a
relief. And a challenge. It hails us. We are tested and driven by it. And
sometimes, there’s nothing left to do but surrender to it. After all (and our
cells, which are 90% space, 10% nucleus prove this)

                                              We are
spaces ourselves.

***********************************************************************************************************

In a field, I
am the absence of field
This is always the case
Wherever I am, I am what is missing
When I walk, I part the air
And always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body’s been
Everyone has reasons for moving on,
I move on to make things whole.

-From the
Poem “Keeping Things Whole” By Mark Strand

Spaces

  spaces

    
             are
not             gaps

      
you say

I have yet

      
to find           a word

                                        
to describe

       the creeping

                                 emptiness

inside

                                                                                        Aida Santos 

(This is our picture during the comelec registration of Ang Ladlad)

 Bemz
Benedito’s story as told to Danicar
Mariano 
            (Printed in Women’s Journal, October 23, 2006)            

I always tell myself how grateful I
am for my family. In gradeschool, my classmate, a close friend of mine, would
come to me crying from the bruises he acquired the night before. It was because
his father and brothers slapped and beat him so he could stop being gay. His
father considered it an insult to his masculinity to have a gay son. He was
told by his parents to turn away from his shameful lifestyle. Spending time
with me and our gay clique in our town in Bangued, Abra was out of the
question. His parents locked him up in their house so he couldn’t go to our
parties. “Kasalanan ang maging bakla,”
he was told. (“It’s a sin to be gay”)  My classmate, in turn, painfully tried to
resist and deny his gay identity.

Sympathizing greatly for his pain,
I feel blessed in many folds that all of this didn’t happen to me. My mother,
on the contrary, brought me bestidas,
and dolled me up as early as I could remember. Being born to a family of 5
older brothers, my parents desperately longed to have a girl when they had me.
I was the only one they sent to an exclusive boy school while all my brothers
went to public schools because my folks had a sense that I was special and more
fragile. They wanted to give me good education.

Growing Up Special

As early as 8 years old, I was
already very soft. My mom would even see me wear her dress and put on her
lipstick and eyeshadow. Whenever we went to manila, I always asked my mom to
buy me Barbie dolls instead of G.I Joes. I just didn’t enjoy toys for men.
Playing with dolls on the other hand supplied a different excitement.

Seeing me grow up like this, my parents did
not have a problem with the fact that I am more feminine than other boys. My
mother was a school teacher and my father was an engineer and both of them were
very gentle and caring folk. They were very understanding. My mom also has a
brother who is gay and I also have cousins on my father’s side who are gay.

My parents, in fact are even happy
with how I turned out because unlike some of my troublesome older brothers, I
didn’t give them any headaches. I could even say point blank that I am my dad’s
favorite unica hija for the longest
time since it was only seven years after me that my sister came. My five older
brothers, who treated me like I was their younger sister and called me “sis”
would even go into fights protecting me. My younger sister and I are also very
close and she treats me like an ate.

In grade 6, when I would go to school with
powder on my face, my parents gently set me aside to tell me how it’s okay for me gay “just don’t over
do it.” I didn’t really know what they meant by not overdoing it, since if you
look at me now, sporting long hair, earrings, make-up, and lipgloss, I don’t
know what more could be overdone. I guess what they meant was that I shouldn’t
reinforce the negative stereotypes of gays as useless palaboys, and that I
should still maintain my decency and be
of service to society. They also didn’t want to see me join gay pageants
because they didn’t want other people ridiculing me, making me an object of
their raucous laughter.

Nonetheless, I could attend parties
wearing women’s clothes and it would be okay for them. My parents didn’t take it as their fault that
I turned out this way, nor did they even think it was a fault. They looked at it
as a blessing in fact, a gift from God
that they couldn’t control. They,
however issued a warning for me not to have a boyfriend, scared that a
boyfriend would just hurt me or just use me for money. My brothers even beat up the first boyfriend
that I had in college.

Trek to Transgenderism

                It was in highschool that I figured that I wasn’t gay. I was a woman trapped in the wrong body. I am transgender. I would look in the mirror I would feel utter horror and despair at what I saw. I wanted to cry at the disparity of what I feel inside and my reflected image. I simply could not see myself in this hard masculine body. I felt alienated from this 3 by 5 crew cut we were required to have. I felt really disturbed and repressed, my self- expression, vastly inhibited.

It was during this time that I
learned from other transgenders in our clique how to use hormonal pills, the
kind that made your breasts swell and decreased your facial hair. I started
growing my hair long. And thus began my transformation into becoming a woman.
Since then, I no longer felt like crying when I looked at the mirror. I now
like what I see. But the journey towards
self-discovery and self-creation is a tedious and hard won battle, a dignity no
one can easily take away from me.

Struggle Against Discrimination

Growing up, I got bullied everyday
for my effeminate nature. Boys would taunt me and call me disparaging names.
They referred to me as “salot” (“plague”)
and shouted after me, “mangaagaw ng lakas.”
(“stealer of strength”) They thought that just because I was like this, I was
nothing but a lust machine and all I could think of was sex. Demeaning jokes
would be cracked at my expense. In ROTC, they would make us run around the
grounds and give us harder punishment in an effort to harden and correct us.

Aside from that, there is this deep
prejudice that you couldn’t excel because you’re gay. I really strived to prove
this wrong. Pinakita ko sa kanila
what a person like me could accomplish. (I really showed them what a person like
me could accomplish.) I became college editor of MassCom Gazette and the
Trinity Observer. I excelled in extracurricular activities.

To understand why society is so
cruel to people like me, I also took up my Masters in Sociology in Ateneo de
Manila to the pride and delight of my parents who would brag about me back home
in our province. I never gave my parents heartache like some of my brothers who
got married right out of college, or got girls pregnant out of wedlock. My
family has always been proud of me and I, in turn, have given them back their
pride.

Harassment

 
    I recall a very painful incident that
happened to me when I worked as a researcher
in a top university’s academic research institution. We gave our
Indian evaluators a tour in Tagaytay. Thinking that I was a woman, they made
unwelcome and intrusive advances on us, me, together with my other female
companion. One of them groped my leg and forced himself to kissing me. I could
not believe what was happening. I was gracious enough to work on a Saturday,
sacrificing my time for them, and they repay our hospitality by harassing
us. I felt dirty, like no amount of
showers would make me clean again. I was so disturbed for 2 to 3 weeks that I
even had to seek professional help. When I reported the incident to my
employers, they thought nothing of it, and tried to sweep it under the
rug.

A co-worker even said “hindi ba dapat matuwa si Bemz don kasi
na-assert yung pagkababae niya?” “(Shouldn’t Bemz be happy that his
womanhood was asserted?”) as if I had no
claim to common decency just because I am transgender. My parents raised me
with so much love and respect to ever tolerate such an abuse sitting down.

I sought the help of renowned gay
activist and Ang Ladlad chair, Danton
Remoto. When he found out what happened, he immediately pushed for the filing
of the case and supported me in my quest for justice.

The damage had already been done,
however. I left the job because of their bias against my case. But when I was
looking for another job, however, I again experienced discrimination while
applying for a

Call

Center

Everything was going well. Initial
interview garnered me praise from the HR personnel and I had already passed the
written exams. The moment the HR  manager
entered the room, however, the dagger look he threw at me made me feel like
running away. He asked me what I was doing there when it seems I was
overqualified for the job.

“Are you gay?” he glared.

“No sir, I am transgender. I
identify as a woman and actually sir, you should be referring to me as a she.”

“Oh really?” he said, raising his
voice and eyebrows. “We have gay employees here but not like you,” he added.

He admitted that my credentials
were really very good but that I could not wear earrings or women’s clothes
since it does not agree with their religious principles. Aside from the
lecture, sinigaw-sigawan niya ako (he
kept shouting at me). “Bakit ka kasi
ganyan ka?” (“Why are you like that?”) he scolded. It was really the most humiliating experience
of my entire life.

“Thank you for wasting my time,” I
told him as I closed the door behind him. By this time I was shaking and crying
in anger and frustration. I was so distressed I called up sir Danton about it.
He calmed me down and since then, together with Ang Ladlad, he I have been
going around trying to raise awareness about these cases of discrimination, in
the hope of their prevention and elimination.

Since that incident, I have found new job as a Program Manager for Advocacy in an NGO, Philippine Resources for Sustainable Development (PRSD) inc. while also teaching English to Koreans.

I still count my manifold blessing,
and I am ever grateful for the solace and support that my family provides me.
Outside, however, the sharp fangs of discrimination grip me. Ridicule,
loneliness and frustrations haunt me.

I want to laugh and rejoice but not
to have the joke on me. I want to be loved, not harassed. I want to be at
peace, to stop being angry. I simply
want to make my parents and family proud. I simply want to be me. Do I turn
back? Do I apologize? For what? I have harmed no one. Despite all the struggles
that I needed to undergo in my life, I regret nothing. I couldn’t imagine a
life where I am not who I am, a transgendered woman. This choice delivers me
happiness, a happiness that I am blessed with and that I choose, just like my
identity. I continue to hope and fight for a truly free society where I can be
just that.

Bemz Benedito part of Angladlad, a
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender political party. angladlad@yahoogroups.com. or visit www.angladlad.org

Mindmapping is a way of structuring information in a non-linear way beginning with a seed idea. I’ve always advocated it cause I think in streams of consciousness and associations, in simultaneous threads of thought. Sometimes I hate that a conversation thread can only follow one. But if you pick up on a “string” I believe it eventually unravels to the core of the whole fabric. The seed. The unsaid. The center, The origin, The trauma. Mindmapping simulates how the unconscious works.

I discovered in the mind-mapping workshop we held in ISIS that I have a
serial killer mind. No, just kidding. That’s just what my boss told me
‘cause the mindmaps that I do are so much more complicated than
everyone else’s. While others had kiddie drawings of schools, spirals,
sunshine trees and little boats, mine was filled to the brim with
though balloons. Apparently, people do not always think in storms and
explosions of words.

“Lit person ka talaga,” she added. Words only give birth to more words. The eternal deferral. The never enough. The almost but not quite. And “Desire is like Language” Butler says.

It only begets more desire. “It is infinitely insatiable precisely because it depends on the suspension of pleasure; of being at pleasures’ opposite end.”

In the workshop, a beach short of being a retreat-seminar, I also discovered that people at work think I am a flirt. (2x!) A Flirt!? I mean sure, I meet tons of lesbians in exclusive parties and cyberspace when I campaign, but I swear, I do it with a one-track mind. I do it for advocacy. And in the sense that advocacy involves persuasion and persuasion often involves a little charm, yes I agree. I do flirt. But I do not tease. I do not promise something I can’t deliver. My material promises lies in political action, not bodily seduction.

Another belief that people like harboring about homosexuals is that we are always horny and sex hungry. I am neither confirming nor denying that. It’s true though that we’re often a lot more honest and comfortable about our bodies. Were certainly better at comparative anatomy. (Logic from "The L word" why we’re quite dangerous that way: “We know and own the same ‘equipment’ as our lovers.”)

And sure, I like the occasional sexual innuendo now and then, but it certainly doesn’t equate to being an animal that can’t curb its instincts. Besides, try spending a day in a room full of gay men. You’d master the art of making even the most innocent sentences sound dirty too. “Hey, what would you like to eat, I mean, food?”
“I love fried tomatoes.”
“Oh my, what nice big shoes you have!”
“Is she coming? No? Perhaps she was distracted? Maybe you should try harder…”

Recently, I’ve faced a very important crossroad/s. I had to choose between effortless, meaningless pleasure or effortful uncertainty with possible consequences of prolonged celibacy. And call it stupid or call it the romantic-masochist in me, but I saw the promising bed of opportunity, and it just didn’t call to me. I felt no urge to ruffle it. I guess I’m just not the type that would engage in something that is purely surface-oriented. Against the unbearable lightness of being, I still believe in depth, in weight and in painful longing.

Even though I may not look it, my closest friends agree: I can’t do “fuck buddy.” (Not that there is anything wrong with it.) I’m just too intense for it.  For all my discourses on multiplicity, I’m still pretty single-minded. Like mapping. Despite an explosion of desires, it can be traced to a seed Word, a core language that decodes everything. (a name?) It’s a curse sometimes. I’m more faithful than I intend to be. Still, I’m grateful for certain chains that bind and ground me.

“There is no use loving someone you can only wake up next to except by chance,” Jeanette Winterson says. And just as cuddling and sleeping and the rituals before and after the fact is just as important as the “point” itself, I agree. The whole thing IS the point. You CAN love somebody you can only wake up next to by chance of course, but then, there would be NO USE. Sex is more than just a sum of its parts. And In a world which does not chastise eroticism as a threat and a taboo, sex would include everything from breathing together, to hands touching, to soft kisses beyond the phallocentric just-get-in-and-get-out modus operandi. You just can’t get that with some random man on the street. You need connection for it. And connection, we find as we get older, is hard to come by. Harder still to rekindle and preserve.

In a world that’s defined through lists and goals, beginning middle end, and recipe orgasms–  particularly male orgasms—dictating that sex revolve around the penis –the lesbian in us calls on us to be more creative.  This is actually something lesbians specialize in: Erotic Extrasensory Perception. Not only do you not need a penis to be erotic, you don’t even need a body. (I also espouse the wonders of telepathy. But that’s another story altogether….)

Just like mind-mapping if you do it honestly, things just pounce on you and surprise you. Spontaneity and simultaneity is key. Like the fact that I so did not totally expect to write about sex in this entry. (But what the hell, whatever turns you on,right?)

Sex should never just be goal-oriented– targeting orgasm "just to take the edge off."  This is because, just like mind-mapping, eroticism is the kernel that invigorates our lives. It’s the seed word from which all things stem and are driven. The Life-drive. The Bio-energy. The force. Prana. Aura. Chi.

As Audre Lorde has said:

“. . . [O]nce we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. . . .

During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.

I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.”

In the workshop, I kept telling people how the mind-map was feminist because it was circuitous and yonic. “It’s like the vagina! It’s the nub from which all things are born! And it can be orgasmic that way, promise!”

And with that, I end my whirling advocacy for Mind-mapping. Enough said.